Carina Ly | Partners: Caroline Gao, Michael Hayashi, Lucy Lu
For the purpose of playing Cruel 2B Kind (Teaching Team style), I decided to team up with three other classmates. However, each of us acted as a puppetmaster individually throughout four rounds, with varied modifications, which we brainstormed together, were made in between rounds. We felt that this would provide more variety and better insights into this game.
In the first round, which I moderated, there were no modifications to the original instructions. People were initially shy to go up to people and attack. However, once the attacks occurred, people were talking over each other and they ended up having to repeat the statement. Eventually, people took turns to show their weapons by explicitly saying which weapon they were going to attack with. Players were also unsure whether their attacks were “good enough.” Some questions included: “Does this count as a truly fake holiday?” or “Is this enough of a compliment?” This led to the puppetmaster facilitating whether an attack was valid enough. Additionally, people were impatient with the 30-second wait time when the same weapon was used; people bounced to other opponents in 5-10 seconds. From this gameplay, it seems like players enjoy “playing games faster” but were also courteous with other players—they didn’t want to talk over each other.
In the next round, the new modifications included not having to wait 30 seconds to attack others and players had to declare their weapons before attacking. By having extra time to attack (since people now had to say what type of weapon they were using), this created less confusion on who won but also made it predictable on what people were going to attack with.
In the following round, we decided to implement another physical factor: each player had to run three times around a table before attacking someone. All the other modifications from the previous round were kept in place because we thought they enhanced the game. Personally, as a player, running was fun at first but I got tired from it and did not really have time to think about my attack since I was focused on running. However, other players did say that running gave them an opportunity to strategize and liked that the game lasted longer.
In the final round, all modifications from the previous round were removed, except not having to wait 30 seconds to attack others. The new modifications included having to only run around a table once and that whoever finishes an attack, regardless of the type, wins that gameplay. While this led to a shorter round and confusion about what others were saying, it did eliminate the time to think about a strategy and reinstated the surprise factor.
If I were to run the game again, I would consider changing the weapon mechanic/hierarchy and include other ways that one could win the game, beyond just choosing one weapon per gameplay.
